Tag Archives: rogue one bacta

Last week, the entire holonet was panicking over rumors that Rogue One was headed for reshoot. Today, we can share the real reason for the controversy: a key cast member is leaving the film.

According to production insiders, a mysterious cast member known only as “Larry” had a pay dispute with studio execs. Disney supposedly cut the celebrity A-lister’s salary and chose to spend it on VFX for “an orange alien with a Jamaican accent”.

Now that Larry has left Rogue One, we can finally share the original cut before Disney’s meddling.

The Rogue crew actually get their name from a mysterious stormtrooper who goes rogue to help the fledgling Rebellion: Stormtrooper FU-1287, aka “Larry”.

“A universe with repulsor technology and they insist on foot patrols. Can’t FUCKING wait for my turn on the tank.”

“Dammit your highness, not again! If you keep peeping with your creepy thugs, I’m switching over to the rebels!”

“Our holonet transmissions were hacked by a defecting trooper. Find this rogue soldier… and kill him.”

“A major weapons test is imminent, but Disney ordered a retest of the weapons test. This gives us time to infiltrate it.”

“I just escaped from that fucking death ball Mon Mothma. You seriously expect me to go back?”

“Here’s the deal. First one to walk away doesn’t get a katana in the ass. Offer expires in 10 seconds.”

“Shit, it’s a dead end! I got a bad feeling about this.”

“Um… how about we surrender?”

“I thought you said they were cargo trucks!”

“Jyn. Promise me you’ll come back.”

“I will. It’s not like Vader will show up or anything.”

Did you know:

Tom Hardy, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise all auditioned for Rogue One? In the end, it was Stormtrooper Larry’s convincing performance and rugged good looks that landed the role.

Larry’s defection to the Alliance was caused not by his moral conscience, but by the Emperor’s habit of peeping in the Death Star’s shower room every Tuesday.

The original ending pitted Darth Vader against Larry, who was armed only with a nightstick, two packs of gum and a used receipt from Watto’s Emporium. Larry bought valuable time for Jyn to transmit the plans, sacrificing his life in the process.

Stormtrooper Larry’s identity remains a secret — he never removed his helmet on set, despite co-star Felicity Jones’ repeated attempts to get in his pants.

Most of these facts were written while I was stuck in a boring meeting.

We’ll release more original footage from our Rogue One insider, so stay tuned! In the meantime, check out the REAL Episode 8 photo posted by director Rian Johnson before Disney whitewashed it.

A couple of days ago, Star Wars fans on Reddit woke up to a massive “leak”, supposedly from a production member of Rogue One. Calling himself KeepR1Dark, he painted a picture of a gritty war film being sundered by Disney’s corporate meddling. And KRD was the Rogue One “film crew” gone rogue.

After KRD failed to produce the promised credentials, the Reddit mods locked the thread and labeled it “Fake – No verification”.

Today, the fallout from the most compelling “leak” yet continues. Bobby Roberts, an editor with the Portland, OR daily Portland Mercury posted these on Twitter:

PSA: That reddit leak you read about that movie you wanna see is just a bored man playing a game called "Lets chum summa this shit."

So what does this have to do with the majority of Star Wars fans? Well, they were retweeted by none other than Lucasfilm lorekeeper Pablo Hidalgo.

While Hidalgo did not address the KRD plot directly, this appears to be his low-key commentary regarding the authenticity of the supposed “leak”.

In addition, multiple Redditors and our own readers have chimed in to poke holes in KRD’s tale. These include:

Reshoots

According to KeepR1Dark, the reason for going his rogue was Disney’s watering down of the film. He specifically cited changes to “Darth Vader’s nighttime massacre scene” and the ending where the entire Rogue crew, except for K-2SO, die.

In reality, Entertainment Weekly broke the news that rather than replace scenes, the reshoot will add new scenes for character development. Contrary to KRD’s allegations, the reshoots will actually involve more “talking in cockpits”:

“The changes have everything to do with clarity and character development and all take place [as inserts] within scenes we’ve already shot,” said one source on the project.

In other words, the changes involve more intimate moments – not redoing entire battle sequences or plot lines. “It’s a lot of talking in cockpits,” as one insider described the new footage.

Bacta tank scene

KRD claims the bacta tank scene is actually the Death Star’s power core, and the one kneeling is Mad Mikkelsen’s character, a key Death Star engineer, in a “What have I done” moment.

However:

The Death Star power core is too compact, compared to the size of the DS-II’s enormous power core

Why were the Royal Guards, Emperor Palpatine’s personal guard, in the room?

Maybe they shouldn’t have killed Mad Mikkelsen. The Death Star 2’s replacement designer was inefficient as fuck.

The AT-ATs

According to KRD, the Rebellion’s concern with the “major weapons test” mentioned in the trailer turned out to be the AT-ACTs. The Death Star itself was only discovered by accident after Jyn escaped from the battle to find her father, who is supposed to be chief designer behind the battlestation.

However, based on the Star Wars: Rebels animated series, the fledgling Rebellion was already well-aware of the Imperial walkers, having encountered them in battle several years before the events of A New Hope.

So while KeepR1Dark painted a compelling war movie with a tragic bittersweet ending, it seems the story is about as truthful as Obi-wan Kenobi.

So yes, from a certain point of view, KeepR1Dark did get one thing right.

And while Reddit-bashing seems to be fashionable lately, remember that historically, the site has been the source of several accurate leaks in the run-up to The Force Awakens.

Update: 24 hours after the promised deadline for proof elapsed, the Reddit thread was marked “Debunked”. See update at the end.

A few hours ago, a Redditor calling himself KeepR1Dark claimed to be involved in making Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If you can’t tell from the username, he seems to have an axe to grind with the reshoots and the new direction the movie is going.

Interestingly, KeepR1Dark has offered to prove his credentials to the Reddit moderators. While we await their verdict, let’s hear the juicy (possible) intel that KRD has to offer.

As always, these leaks are not 100% confirmed. Read at your own risk!

The plot

The Rebel Alliance has caught wind of a weapons test on a planet in the outer rim. Our hero Jyn Erso is caught trying to steal a rebel fighter and is taken into custody. When her background is revealed she’s given the choice of going on a mission to the planet to see what kind of weapons are being tested or being turned over to bounty hunters to be turned into the Empire for the substantial price on her head.

Unbeknownst to the other characters Jyn has received a transmission from a man claiming to be her father and telling her that the fate of the entire galaxy rests on whether or not she can find him.

The Rebels go on their mission and discover the Empire testing Imperial walkers and order an attack on the prototypes, but the Walkers are fully operational and now down the Rebel attack squad. Jyn escapes during the battle and resumes the search for her father and his mysterious warning.

The Death Star

… the Rebels are totally unaware of the Death Star’s existence. The weapons test they are concerned with is for Imperial Walkers. They only discover the Death Star because Jyn goes rogue and is determined to find her father.

Mad Mikkelsen’s character

Jyn Erso’s father is alive but as a designer of the Death Star is on death row so as not to spill it’s secrets.

He’s had a change of heart at some point and has left the Death Star with a very small vulnerability, but a vulnerability nonetheless. He’s contacted his daughter to come and get the details of the vulnerability from him into the hands of the Rebel Alliance and chose his daughter specifically so he can apologize before his death for being an absentee father.

About Jyn

She remains loyal only to the idea of finding her father. She doesn’t care about the battle between the Empire and the Rebellion, she just wants to find her father. It is that love which uncovers the Death Star. The Rebellion would have been screwed if Jyn didn’t go rogue.

About the bacta tank scene

KRD claims it’s NOT a bacta tank, but a power core:

It’s not a tank. It’s a power core (for) the Death Star. The man kneeling in front of it is Jyn’s father having a “What have I done?” moment. The scene we are talking about is right before his arrest.

More on the aliens and the robot:

One is comic relief, one’s a serious ass kicker, and one is killed off much sooner than you’ll be expecting.

Do we see Vader?

Ohhhh yeah. In a night scene Vader absolutely lays waste to a Rebel ground Squad. Unfortunately this is one of the scenes we have to water down. We made it like something from the old slasher/horror films. Rebel soldiers who joked about a boogie man with magical powers and then minutes later are absolutely wasted.

Other OT characters

Just Vader and Leia and Tarkin and Mothma.

Cameos

Yes there’s a huge A lister who has one line but I don’t want to spoil it because we’re keeping that and it’s such an awesome “what the hell” moment.

Battle scenes

One big ground battle, 4 skirmishes, no space battles but there is a space pursuit of sorts.

On the original ending:

What we’ve created is not so far from the inspiration of the original films in that we styled it after WWII combat. The difference is that the original trilogy only used that inspiration for air fights. We invoke that same feeling in infantry scenes. There’s a beachhead scene that’s very much derivative of Saving Private Ryan, but in the Star Wars universe. Imagine the Stormtroopers are Rebel soldiers and as soon as those ramps come down and they run off the transports they’re mowed down by enemy fire. That’s what we’ve made here.

I’ll put it this way: a lot of characters die in this movie right now, and that was supposed to be the whole point. You don’t name an entire squadron after a group that got a happy ending, no that’s normally in honor of a great sacrifice.

The ending will stay the same, but the crew’s fate will be implied, not shown. The reshoot a will be for our Normandy inspired beachhead scene and the Vader massacre, as well as a few other combat scenes.

(Disney) wants a movie that kids can watch too because that will net the most money. (Director) Gareth is livid.

What happens in the last 10 minutes?

MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS: Jyn Erso and crew beaming the plans aboard the Tantive IV before their ship is destroyed by an Imperial caravan.

The Alliance gets knocked around the whole film until the end. Remember when ANH starts the Rebels had just scored their first victory. (The sole victory is) literally at the very end of the movie.